Flash memory devices have proven to be important memory elements in the past several years, and industry pundits predict an ever-increasing role for such devices in the future. A great advantage flash memory devices have over typical EPROM's and EEPROM's are, respectively, system programmability and lower cost.
Despite the many advantages of flash memories over other memories, flash memory devices have several opportunities for improvement. For example, flash memories in their typical implementations suffer from the problems of "overerased memory cells" and "wild cells" which result in all memory cells not behaving exactly alike with respect to their electrical behavior. In fact, many flash memory devices include wide variations of electrical behavior between adjacent memory cells.
Overerased memory cells are particularly undesirable. Overerased memory cells arise when a block of memory cells is erased. Because of the behavioral dissimilarities of the memory cells within the block, one memory cell typically takes longer to erase than other memory cells. As a result, this memory cell defines the erasure time for all memory cells in the block.
Erasing the block for the defined erasure time results in some memory cells being overerased. Overerased memory cells are memory cells that were erased for an excessive period of time. Overerased memory cells have an undesirable large positive charge on their floating gate. For example, an overerased memory cell will have a floating gate voltage of 3V. A non-overerased memory cell will typically have a floating gate voltage of 0.5V . As a result, overerased memory cells operate in the depletion mode. Hence, overerased memory cells conduct current through a bit line to which they are coupled even when the overerased cells are biased with zero drain voltages.
Thus, selected programmed memory cells, coupled to the same bit line as an overerased memory cell, will appear to draw current and appear to be erased. Therefore, data stored in the flash memory devices may not be accurately read. Therefore, overerased memory cells are preferably corrected.
Typically, overerased memory cells are corrected, by applying a gate voltage of 12 volts to the entire block of memory cells. As the floating gate voltage of such memory cells becomes sufficiently lower to come out of depletion mode. With the gate of the overerased cells sufficiently higher than normally erased cells, the control gate couples the floating gate even higher, through a tunneling mechanism in the channel or source area. Electrons are pulled to the floating gate, and lower the voltage of the floating gate. However, during the aforementioned process, since the procedure affects all of the cells in the block, some non-overerased memory cells become undesirably programmed. Therefore, there is a need to correct overerased memory cells while avoiding undesired programming of non-overerased memory cells.